The laughter that poured from the tavern roared like a campfire. It was the kind of campfire that you wanted to go and sit around.
Snow fell outside, but the snowflakes were in no great hurry to reach the ground. The snowflakes that fell around Phoenix melted and turned to vapor before reaching his orange and red feathers, which glowed hot like embers.
‘That’s where people go to forget that they have to die one day,’ Cricket said, nodding at the tavern. It was mostly dark through the front windows of the tavern, but there was light from small candles at the tables and there was a soft yellow light that came from the bar. In the candlelight and the yellow light you could make out the people laughing, drinking, eating, and huddling close.
‘Are they the better for it, after they’re done and they come outside where the cold breath of the snow and the quiet walk home make them remember what they’d forgotten?’ asked Phoenix.
‘Who’s to say?’ chirped Cricket. ‘But they shared a laughing fire together, and what’s sweeter than that? We all must step outside eventually.’
Sitting outside the tavern was a man holding a violin bow. He was dead, and where his chest stopped near his heart the skin was brushstrokes of violet oil paint. His heart, steaming and beating naked in the icy air, was ocher clay, and snaking from his clay heart were iron metal arteries.
The man picked up his bow and moved it to his heart, where he rested the bow on his arteries, or heartstrings. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and on his exhale he moved the bow. His heartstrings hummed and made sounds that were warm and deep, like hot wine. The sounds warmed Phoenix and Cricket as they stood there in the snowy night, and Phoenix’s feathers glowed just as embers glow when fanned.
‘I move my bow across my heartstrings when I hear something that resonates with me,’ the man said. ‘What you two just spoke of resonated with me.’
A couple who stopped to listen to the song dropped change at the dead man’s feet, and then walked on.
‘Ah,’ the man said. ‘What you said struck me, and what I played warmed you and also warmed them. All is connected, eh?’
‘Who are you?’ chirped Cricket.
‘Oh, just another reminder of what’s coming. Or, as you call it, the cold breath of the wind and the quiet walk home.’ The man bowed, and then walked out into the darkness. 